12.14.2009

Well, if the world economy really does implode at a yet-to-be-determined date in the not so distant future, we can't claim we weren't warned.

And make no mistake, it will. Why? Because apparently we've some how lost our ability to take in new information and form new beliefs based on this new information. I believe they called it “learning” before it completely went out of fashion.

The always interesting, and usually quite right nobel laurete in economics, Paul Krugman, offers an excellent take-down of the alternative reality that the hard right finds themselves stuck in these days.

As he explains, they continue to delude themselves that all is well, despite the fact that their beloved business mavens have been the recipients of the largest and most shocking display of public largesse, um, ever, because their utterly unregulated business transactions blew up in their faces and their first reaction was to go running for the shelter of the welfare state.

Which, to recap, remains a bad thing for individuals, but apparently a good thing for companies and the wealthiest individuals the world has ever seen.

Oh, and he doesn't spare what passes for a left in American politics either, pointing out that the utter lack of meaningful reform by the bought-and-paid for by finance Democrats pretty much guarantees a repeat because, in the words of philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

And, as an added bonus, enjoy Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi's well-deserved drubbing of the Obama administration's craven cave-in to big finance, delivered in the fine form of a first class polemicist.